Being "Mohammed" in Australia

This afternoon I had a coffee with a friend of mine who recently got out of detention. After 5 long years, he is finally free and wandering around in this wide brown land wondering what happens next. I often love that conversation - the first proper catch up after a month's craziness after detention. But sometimes - and this has happened a few times recently - the person I'm speaking to doesn't have the look of freedom in their eye.

This guy I saw today looked so tired and drained. I begrudgingly told him that he didn't look any better than when he was in detention. He confessed that he'd been running himself into the ground a bit, but then he began talking about the fact that he has had quite a few unpleasant incidents of people being completely racist towards him. Bouncers not letting him into bars, potential employers expressing reservations at his name (the dreaded "M" word), people looking at him funny.

If he were the only person who said this stuff to me it mightn't concern me, but it's happened a lot recently. The last guy was an african guy who's on a bridging visa, who was just about in tears because he had experienced such blatant discrimination.

When will these guys be able to get on with their damn lives?!

It also brings to mind the story of a friend of mine whose family is Lebanese. She was once the proud owner of the name Fatima Abdulatif. UNTIL her brother started applying for jobs, didn't get any, and was told by his temp agency that it was because his name has 'Abdul' in it. So, their ENTIRE family has changed its surname to Latif. They got rid of that nasty 'Abdul' business. And not only that, Fatima has become Tina. By deed poll. Her entire middle eastern heritage and her family's nationality, origin, religion and identity have been sanitised into oblivion because we DON'T LIKE IT. (reminiscent of anyone you know....??)

How embarrassing for white Australians, and how devastating for thousands of new Australians, that we as a nation cannot see past a name. I think that's about enough!